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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Can a Scare Cure the Hiccups ?

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Topics Blog

Can a Scare Cure the Hiccups ?

The recent death of a Fort Hood U.S. Army soldier
in Killeen, Texas,
shows that a belief in the folk cure of scaring away hiccups can have tragic effects when taken
to the extreme, but does the cure have any basis if administered within reason?

Pfc. Isaac Lawrence Young,
22, died after allegedly being shot and killed by a fellow soldier trying to
startle him out of a case of hiccups while the two men watched a football game.
The accused shooter, Pfc. Patrick
Edward Myers, 27, claims he thought his gun was loaded with
blanks and is charged with manslaughter, Reuters reported. World Hot Topics Blog

There is
no solid scientific proof to pair with the centuries of anecdotes that prop up
the hiccup scare cure, but there are a number of reasons that the home remedy's
value might go beyond the placebo effect.

Though
hiccups' purpose remains elusive, their mechanism is well understood. They
occur when rhythmic spasms of the diaphragm result in a noisy contraction of
the vocal chords. Most of the common folk cures for hiccups seem to try to
confront this phenomenon in one of two ways: by diverting the brain's resources
away from the nerves responsible for the hiccups (for example, asking a
sufferer "What did you have for breakfast two days ago?"); or by
directly interfering with or stimulating the parts of the body involved in the
hiccup (for example, massaging the throat, drinking water or eating a spoonful
of peanut butter).

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Some
cures have the possible advantage of combining these two approaches, as when
breath-holding interrupts the normal motion of the diaphragm while also
increasing the body's level of carbon dioxide, which may cause the brain to
neglect hiccup upkeep and focus instead on the pressing matter of resuming
oxygen supply, according to the website of the NYU Medical Center's Department
of Otolaryngology.

A sudden
scare is another potential dual threat, capable of jump-starting the breath
pattern while also giving an overriding stimulus to the sympathetic nervous
system, which activates the fight-or-flight stress response.

In a case
report published in the journal Canadian Family Physician in 2000, Aya Peleg
and Dr. Roni Peleg discuss a 40-year-old man who was suddenly cured of a
four-day case of the hiccups when he ejaculated during intercourse with his
wife.

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The
authors speculated the unexpected cure worked for the same reason as the scare
method: "A mechanism similar to this occurs when someone is startled,
resulting theoretically in sympathetic stimulation that might lead to a
cessation of hiccups," they wrote.

They
concluded the report by adding another potential remedy to the archive:
"Under circumstances in which sexual intercourse with a partner is not
possible, masturbation might be tried as a means of stopping intractable
hiccups."